Long before Dr. Janet Seabrook was an award-winning physician and public health leader in Gary, she was just a kindergartener with a dream. She remembers visiting her pediatrician one day and deciding she wanted to be a doctor after the physician let Seabrook listen to her heartbeat with a stethoscope.
“I said, ‘I’d like to use that one day,’ and have had it stuck in my head ever since,” Seabrook recalls.
She also got a lot of encouragement from her kindergarten teacher in Gary, Mrs. Springer, who said she could be whatever she wanted to be when she grew up, despite what her peers or anyone else thought.
“The boys would laugh,” when she spoke about her aspirations of becoming a doctor, she said. She remembers their taunts: “You mean a nurse, you mean a nurse,” they’d say, assuming the stereotype that only men could be doctors. But Seabrook didn’t let that deter her from her dream.
Seabrook, a Charleston, South Carolina, native who moved with her family to Gary at an early age, went on to earn degrees from two HBCUs: a bachelor of science in biology from Tuskegee University and a degree in medicine from Meharry Medical College. She later earned an MBA from Purdue University in Calumet. In 1996, Seabrook founded Community HealthNet, a nonprofit community-based health care provider that grew from one small trailer in Gary to eight locations across Lake County.
In February, the mayor’s office announced her appointment to lead the city’s public health department, where she will support efforts to tackle Gary’s infant and maternal mortality rates, address senior needs, and establish a mobile mental crisis response team, among other initiatives.
Surrounded by award-adorned walls at her local Community HealthNet office, Seabrook spoke with Capital B Gary about her goals as the city’s new health commissioner, how she plans to “wrap my arms around the work that needs to be done” and the “surreal” feeling of being the first woman to hold the role in over 30 years.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Capital B Gary: What are some plans that you’re excited to start enacting in your new role?
Dr. Janet Seabrook: I’m looking forward to being able to put together and implement the mental health crisis team. The mobile mental health unit would have a team of individuals that receive over 60 to 80 hours of training in de-escalating situations that normally go to the police department. That team will be comprised of clinical behavioral health specialists, social workers, and crisis team intervention specialists.
When we start it, it’ll probably just be a pilot because Gary is huge. So we would need to divide it up and start it in the areas that have had the most calls for mental health type of crisis situations before we spread to the entire city.
One of the other things that I’m looking forward to is looking at ways to reduce infant and maternal mortality. Lake County in general has a high rate of maternal and infant mortality. Those numbers are even higher when you just focus on Gary.
The key is getting those moms into prenatal care as soon as they find out in their first trimester. The earlier we know that you’re pregnant, the sooner we can start that much-needed care and education. Tobacco cessation and reducing substance abuse is another way to help reduce infant and maternal mortality. Someone who is obese or diabetic is also at higher risk for maternal mortality and infant mortality, so addressing those chronic conditions that could impact the pregnancy [is important].
Do you have any comment on the Lake County case of measles, or anything that Gary residents should know?
I think that it’s important that people understand that measles is very contagious. And to certain vulnerable populations, like unvaccinated infants or pregnant mothers, it could be potentially fatal. So it’s important that people get vaccinated and to make sure that if they are not going to be vaccinated, that if they do have a communicable disease, that they would not bring it into the public arena.
How do you feel your previous experience with family medicine has helped inform how you approach this position?
As the health commissioner, you’re looking at the entire population and not just, you know, children or adults or the elderly. You look at everybody, and as a family physician, that’s what we were trained to do. I’ve delivered babies. I’ve taken care of prenatal patients. I have taken care of 20-year-olds and done their sports and college physicals, and adults 30 and above 45.
My experience in family medicine and my training has helped me see the population from birth to geriatric, and what is being done at the health department is looking at the entire population from birth until geriatrics because it is the role of the health department to educate the populace. So you’re talking about everybody.
Considering that experience, what barriers do you feel like you had to overcome being a Black woman in this field, and especially to get to this level of your career now?
One example that comes to mind: At that time, at either campus of the Methodist Hospital, (where Seabrook did her surgical residency) there wasn’t a changing room for female physicians. I had to go over to the nurse’s quarters changing room to change into my surgical scrubs. So that’s something that has always stuck with me. I don’t know if they changed it since then, because now we have more women surgeons at both campuses.
Does being one of the city’s first women health commissioners come within an extra layer of pressure or heightened expectations?
Yes to both. But I have this saying: “How can you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”
What’s some advice that you have for other young Black women who are trying to work their way up in this industry?
I always say keep pushing forward. Don’t let anyone distract you or discourage you or talk you out of your dream. Look for mentors, supporters, and positive people to surround yourself with because, you know, I don’t want to sugarcoat it. It is a difficult role.
You have a lot of awards and certificates. Are there any that have a certain significance to you?
This one (pointing to an ivory-framed silver award on the wall with Martin Luther King Jr.’s image, encased in a glass frame), my Drum Major Award. It’s from the Gary Frontiers, and it’s one of the highest honors that they give out.
(The award honors individuals who have spent their lives in service-oriented roles. Seabrook won the award in 2019 for working with the mayor’s office to establish Community HealthNet.)
When I accepted the award they sent me the program of the previous award winners and my great aunt was there, and my kindergarten teacher Mrs. Springer, who passed the year before last, had received the Drum Major Award as well. I had no idea. My kindergarten teacher, from every open house, every ribbon cutting, she was out in the audience. Since the day I came back and started Community HealthNet, she’s been there.
When I got that award and realized that she had gotten one, too, I said it was meant to be. She was meant to be my kindergarten teacher. So seeing those two women who had so much meaning in my life get that same award that I got, that’s the one that I cherish the most.